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Matt Wilson: Have Drums, Will Travel

By LAWRENCE PERYER February 13, 2012 , INTERVIEWS

Matt Wilson: Have Drums, Will Travel

Drummer Matt Wilson must surely be in the running for the title of hardest-working man in jazz. Wilson is a composer, bandleader, producer and teacher. As a leader, his projects include the Matt Wilson Quartet, Arts & Crafts, Christmas Tree-O and the Carl Sandburg Project. He has been in bands with luminaries such as Joe Lovano, ...

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Kenny Burrell: Every Note Swings

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI February 6, 2012 , INTERVIEWS

Kenny Burrell: Every Note Swings

Kenny Burrell has appeared on so many essential jazz recordings that jazz history and his story seem irretrievably intertwined. Billie Holiday's valedictory rumination Lady Sings the Blues (Verve, 1956)? Jimmy Smith's epochal funk throwdown Back at the Chicken Shack (Blue Note, 1960)? Tony Bennett's Carnegie Hall debut? Kenny Burrell played guitar for them all. Even Jimi ...

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BAM or JAZZ: Part Two!

By GREG THOMAS February 6, 2012 , RACE AND JAZZ

BAM or JAZZ: Part Two!

Jazz, an art form given birth in the United States by descendents of the formerly enslaved, has a complicated relationship with race. Although race, as a popular idea, has no basis in biology, many people mentally adhere to the idea of dividing groups of people based on “race" as opposed to understanding how groups of people ...

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Terell Stafford: Trial and Inspiration

By ANDREW J. SAMMUT January 30, 2012 , INTERVIEWS

Terell Stafford: Trial and Inspiration

Terell Stafford is as likely to credit his influences as he is to impress his listeners. Coming to jazz comparatively later than many players, and even with his busy schedule as a sideman, leader and educator, he remains devoted to exploring the music's roots, while expressing a relentless desire to learn more.

Stafford first started playing ...

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Lars Danielsson: Love is the Message

By JAMES PEARSE January 23, 2012 , INTERVIEWS

Lars Danielsson: Love is the Message

Saturday night in an unusually mild December 2011 at Stockholm's premier jazz venue, Fasching, could only mean one thing: the place was heaving. As well as the unseasonable weather and the looming Christmas period, the reason so many festive Swedes were crammed in like tinned herring was to catch a rare glimpse of national hero Nils ...

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Miles Davis: 1986-1991 The Warner Years

By JEFF DAYTON-JOHNSON January 18, 2012 , MULTIPLE REVIEWS

Miles Davis: 1986-1991 The Warner Years

Miles Davis
1986-1991 The Warner Years
Warner Music France
2011

Warner Bros. was trumpeter Miles Davis's last record company, and the five years covered by the five-disc collection entitled 1986-1991 The Warner Years, pale in comparison to the 30-year, 70-disc box set of Davis' complete recordings for Columbia Records, released in 2009. So ...

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Bela Fleck (BEY-Lah Fleck): See Curious, Creative Mind

By R.J. DELUKE January 17, 2012 , INTERVIEWS

Bela Fleck (BEY-Lah Fleck): See Curious, Creative Mind

Béla Fleck has taken his instrument--the banjo--to heights that seemed unimaginable prior to couple decades ago. There have been virtuoso players in its long history, but the sounds Fleck elicits through electronics, and the musical landscapes he treads upon, are groundbreaking.

He's got all that in his pocket. But as a twenty-something musician whose prowess was ...

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Enrico Rava: To Be Free or Not To Be Free

By IAN PATTERSON January 16, 2012 , INTERVIEWS

Enrico Rava: To Be Free or Not To Be Free

Freedom, it could be argued, is most deeply understood by those who have been somehow constrained against their will, or who have been prisoners of their own skewed vision of what it means to be free. Trumpeter Enrico Rava knows the meaning of musical freedom; he was part of the free-jazz scene of the 1960s and ...

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BAM or JAZZ: Why It Matters

By GREG THOMAS January 12, 2012 , RACE AND JAZZ

BAM or JAZZ: Why It Matters

Since the last Race and Jazz column, the first of a multi-part discussion with John Gennari--the top scholar on the history of jazz criticism--a firestorm of controversy has arisen surrounding Nicholas Payton's declaration that, to him, the word jazz is dead. He also feels that the word jazz is tantamount to or worse than the “n" ...

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Claire Daly: The Most Jazz Life I Could Ever Imagine

By ANDREA WOLPER January 10, 2012 , INTERVIEWS

Claire Daly: The Most Jazz Life I Could Ever Imagine

December 22, 1935. “I am going up the Taku River by dogteam to Fairbanks." “But you can't do that; there are mountains or something you can't get over. Anyway, it's no place for a woman." Thus man disposes of woman. That settled I went quietly about my business of getting ready. Thus begins the journal of ...

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Rez Abbasi: Thoroughly Modern Marvel

By LAWRENCE PERYER January 2, 2012 , INTERVIEWS

Rez Abbasi: Thoroughly Modern Marvel

Guitarist Rez Abbasi is part of a generation of jazz musicians who came of age after the conservative backlash of the 1980s. He and his peers are making their mark on America's art form by contributing their rich and varied cultural backgrounds and with an embrace of popular culture that was heresy in some quarters for ...

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Talkin' Blues with Jimmy Herring

By ALAN BRYSON December 27, 2011 , TALKIN' BLUES

Talkin' Blues with Jimmy Herring

Jimmy Herring is a musician who blurs lines, both in terms of genres and roles. Over the past two decades his work with the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Gov't Mule, The Allman Brothers Band, Frogwings, Phil Lesh & Friends, Project Z, Jazz is Dead, and Widespread Panic has cemented his position as one of the world's premier ...

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Local Calendar


Date Title/Musician Venue Location
Feb 14 Gina Fox The Mill at Spring Lake Heights Spring Lake Heights, NJ
Feb 14 Jordan Siwek Aza Lounge (New York, NY) New York, NY
Feb 14 Jazz by Candlelight: Valentine Edition Antibes Bistro New York, NY
Feb 14 Amy Vachal Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 New York, NY
Feb 14 The Robert Rucker Project Cleopatra's Needle New York, NY
Feb 14 Russel Brown and the Skipper's All`Stars Feauturing Vocalist Lisa Nobumoto and Saxophonist Roland Washington Skipper's Plane Street Pub Newark, NJ
Feb 14 Russel Brown and the Skipper's All`Stars Featuring Vocalist Lisa Nobumoto and Saxophonist Roland Washington Skipper's Plane Street Pub Newark, NJ
Feb 14 Floanne The Triad Theater New York, NY
Feb 14 Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks in New York City on 02/14/12 Sofia's Restaurant downstairs Club Cache at the Edison Hotel New York City, NY
Feb 15 Tim McCall Aza Lounge (New York, NY) New York, NY
Feb 15 Sway Machinery Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust New York, NY
Feb 15 Bill Crow Red Hat Irvington, NY